A highlight from the latest edition of Mars Hill Audio. If you're not a subscriber, shame on you.D.C. Schindler explains the significance of the classical claim that actuality is prior to potentiality. It means that potential is limited (and also unleashed) by the particular thing that a thing is. Its actuality as X determines what kind of potential it can have, because X is a particular kind of thing. An acorn's actuality determines that it has potentiality to become an oak tree; given it's actuality, it doesn't have the potential to become a dolphin.

This is in contrast to the implied modern conception that places the priority on potentiality, or sheer possibility. What X becomes doesn't depend on what X is; X can choose to be whatever it wants to be.

As can be seen, the metaphysics of act and potency is linked to a notion of freedom. In the classical conception, freedom assumes actuality as a particular kind of thing or person. For modernity, freedom is unlimited variability.

Schindler made the important point that actualities can be acquired. By practice, I can become a skilled pianist. That acquired actuality means that I have the potential - the freedom - to play Beethoven's Sonata 17.

Someone who has never practiced may have an abstract potential to play the piano - he has fingers, eyes, a brain, ears, etc. But in fact he's not free to play the piano because he hasn't actualized himself as "piano player."

One can make an ethical application of the same model: A person is free to act in a particular way only by being a particular kind of person. A good tree produces good fruit. And we can also work this out in a virtue ethics direction.